Gogoro launches in India with new locally made electric scooter and battery swapping

After first running a successful pilot program in India to test the local market, e-scooter and battery-swapping giant Gogoro is now making a major expansion into India. But Gogoro isn’t only bringing its technology to India, it’s actually producing new scooter models there.

In addition to bringing the company’s famed battery-swapping GoStations to India, Gogoro is also introducing a new electric scooter model today that is specifically tailored for India.

Gogoro’s newly unveiled domestically-produced electric scooter for India is known as the Gogoro CrossOver GX250, a variant of the recently unveiled CrossOver SUV-like scooter. The new electric two-wheeler will be produced in Maharashtra and is designed to offer a lower entry price to further increase the accessibility of the company’s e-scooters.

The GX250 “captures the best of Gogoro’s new CrossOver Smartscooters while integrating India-specific features that Gogoro pilot riders in India requested,” the company explained.

The scooter is optimized for various road surfaces and qualities with a newly developed all-terrain frame that provides increased rigidity for improved strength and stability. It also offers more ground clearance than any other vehicle in the company’s current lineup. Each part of the scooter was designed and inspected with regard to the Indian market, right down to the smallest components. “Even the horn,” Gogoro’s founder and CEO Horace Luke told Electrek from Delhi while preparing for the launch announcement. “They use the horn here like radar, it’s constantly on. So it has to be good!”

While India has a healthy domestic electric scooter industry, the country has so far focused on grid-charged electric scooters that must be parked for several hours near a wall outlet during the charging process. Gogoro’s battery-swapping model allows riders to simply swap out multiple depleted batteries at a swap station in seconds, getting back on the road immediately with a full charge.

In the company’s domestic market of Taiwan, the Gogoro Network supports nearly 600,000 riders and has more than 1.3 million smart batteries in circulation through its network of 12,000 battery swapping stations at over 2,500 locations around the country. Riders perform 400,000 daily battery swaps and the company has seen over a half billion total battery swaps to date in Taiwan alone.

After expanding to several other countries in the last few years, Gogoro is now looking to replicate that success in India. And the locally-produced CrossOver GX250 scooter is a major part of the plan.

The scooter will first be available for B2B customers in Delhi and Goa, with plans to roll out in Mumbai and Pune in the first half of 2024, with consumer availability beginning in the second quarter of 2024.

In addition to the CrossOver 250, there will also be CrossOver 50 and CrossOver S models available. The CrossOver GX250 is immediately available today with the CrossOver 50 and CrossOver S expected to ship later in 2024.

As Luke continued:

“We are at the cusp of a dramatic change in the global urban transportation landscape, and with its more than 250 million mopeds and motorcycles India is well positioned to lead the shift to sustainable consumer and B2B transportation. The Gogoro CrossOver series embodies everything our brand has come to stand for and the new made-in-India CrossOver GX250 is optimized for riders in India with more seating space, greater storage and better ground clearance.”

The “250” in GX250 comes from the 2.5 kW direct drive motor that provides a top speed of 60+ km/h (38+ mph) and a certified range of 111 km (69 miles). While that speed is around a third lower than several of Gogoro’s more powerful scooters, anyone who has traveled in major Indian cities knows that the opportunities to reach such speeds are few and far between.

The CrossOver GX250 can seat two riders (officially speaking, though we’ll see what happens when families get access to these) and comes with ample storage options thanks to a new mounting point expansion system that includes 26 locking points. There are four cargo areas including a platform design headlight, foot, seat, and rear cargo space, meaning most riders should have plenty of cargo capacity.

To carry even more though, the rear seat can be flipped up or removed to add cargo storage as needed. Again, as anyone who has traveled in India can attest to, many motorbikes and scooters regularly carry more cargo than most pickup trucks do in North America.

The GX250 was certified by India’s International Centre for Automotive Technology (ICAT) in August. Just last month Gogoro became the first foreign two-wheel OEM to be recognized by the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), entitling the CrossOver GX250 for its EV financing programs.

While the new CrossOver GX250 electric scooter’s debut is certainly exciting for local riders, Gogoro’s larger expansion into India is perhaps more monumental as it sets the ground for a wide rollout of battery-swapping GoStations.

Gogoro’s modus operandi has usually been to enter new markets by starting with business-to-business (B2B) operations before expanding to consumer-based sales. “This allows us to first see the baseload for the GoStations, before consumer use lights up,” Luke explained to Electrek. Those battery-swapping stations will first serve the B2B customers and then will be ready for an expanded ridership of consumer scooters as well.

In many countries, Gogoro has begun with motorbike-based taxi services and delivery services, which the company expects to replicate in India. The company began last year with a pilot in India by partnering with Zypp Electric for similar motorbike delivery services. That partnership will continue as Gogoro expands its India-based operations.

Simultaneously, Gogoro is also announcing an interesting new partnership with FutureEV. The company is launching a tourist-focused scooter-sharing service in the Indian tourist city of Goa exclusively using Gogoro battery swapping and Smartscooters.

FutureEV will begin a pilot on Dec 25, 2023, with a commercial launch expected in the first quarter of 2024. FutureEV plans to deploy 10,000 Gogoro Smartscooters including the CrossOver GX250 by 2025.

The partnership with FutureEV will also provide opportunities for local entrepreneurs to establish their own franchises. With Goa ranked 15th in the world in vehicle density and with more than 8.5 million tourists annually, the city has announced it will be making it mandatory that all new tourist vehicles, rent-a-cab, and rent-a-bike operations be electric starting in 2024.

Gogoro has also announced a new partnership with Nebula Energy, a subsidiary of Nepal-based MG Group. The company is partnering with Nebula Energy to roll out battery swapping and Smartscooters in Nepal, further growing Gogoro’s rapidly expanding international footprint.

With operations already underway in Taiwan, The Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia, China, Israel, and India, Nepal will be joining several other established operations as Gogoro continues it expansion around the world.